Convergences of Faith & Technology
Photo by Ales Nesetril on Unsplash
Readers who might have followed my work prior to starting this project might know that I have an ongoing interest in the convergence between faith and technology, in particular the internet, social media and their effects on our conceptions of ourselves (anthropology), conceptions of what the Church is (ecclesiology), and how Christ could work to save those who live their lives in a digital continent (Christology).
This has resulted in a number of works scattered in journals and websites. So dispersed they were that even I am starting to lose track of them, so I thought it was time to bring as much of it as possible into one place.
My most recent encounter was with FaithTech, an organisation dedicated to bringing together Christians in the various tech industries across the world, and run the very funny and informative Device and Virtue podcast. They very kindly picked up one of the posts in this blog, co-edited it and shared it under the title What Your Smartphone Wants for Your Faith.
Also out are two works published in conjunction with Texas A&M University’s Prof. Heidi Campbell, who edited two volumes on faith and technology during this time of pandemic.
One essay I wrote on “Communion in the Digital Body of Christ” became part of The Distanced Church (essay no. 27). That essay was more of a personal reflection on the experience of attending liturgies online, and my re-evaluation of my initial hesitation about the Church’s engagement with technology.
My second essay project with Campbell was a more speculative piece entitled “Online Church, Common Good and Sacramental Praxis”. As the name suggests, it was an attempt to construct an ecclesiology for the digital continent in this coronatide, with reference to the Catholic Social principle of the Common Good and the sacramental life of the Church. This became essay no. 10 of Digital Ecclesiology: A Global Conversation.
A final essay was my attempt in bringing systematic theology to bear on the subject of the Church’s online presence, with reference to the work of the Anglican theologian Sarah Coakley. That essay, “Sarah Coakley and the Prayers of the Digital Body of Christ”, put forward the case that the practice of prayer can help us discern the possibilities and pitfalls of a Christian’s immersion in cyberspace, and was published in the volume Sarah Coakley and the Future of Systematic Theology, edited by Janice McCrandal.
What I hope to tease out in works like these and in others to come, is the way in which technology is not just something “out there”, external to the faith, but something integral to its practice, especially as the various forms of digital technologies become more integrated in the warp and weft of daily life during this coronatide. These technologies are not mere instruments, but part of the City of Man, which Augustine said that the Church must move through as it works its way towards the eschaton.
Be that as it may, the Church is also a channel of grace for these technologies, and it is the ongoing task of the Christian to discern the terms by which that grace can be afforded, and the point in which the Church runs the risk of extending another empire altogether.
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